Cipher
by Incognito Temptation
Summary: A cipher is a person of no influence, nonentity. Sai is nothing. He is not Sasuke. [SaiSaku, SasuSaku TWOSHOT]
1. Not seeing

**Cipher**

* * *

He isn't Sasuke, but sometimes it's hard to bear that in mind. 

Sometimes when he turns and glances at her out of the corner of his eyes (_tenebrous, dark eyes, eyes that I could almost drown in),_ she sees Sasuke staring back. (_Sasuke's eyes, it's really Sasuke this time!_)

Sometimes when he insults her and calls her ugly and a hag, she forgets that it's really Sai saying it. She imagines it to be Sasuke, so his words sting twice as bad. She hits him harder than she does Naruto, just for sounding like Sasuke. He should know better.

Sometimes when he surprises her by waiting for her outside the hospital, she sees Sasuke leaning casually against the brick wall. Its Sasuke who raises his hand in an airy wave, still slouching—and with a smirk tugging at the corners of his mouth. (_Hey Sasuke-kun!_)

But Sai doesn't smirk. He doesn't smile. He fakes his emotions, because he has none.

Sasuke may have been a pompous jerk, but he had feelings somewhere deep inside. He got upset whenever Sakura talked about her parents. He became angry when she threatened to tattle about the curse mark.

He felt.

Sai feels nothing. He feels nothing_ (nothing nothing nothing, oh god it's not really Sasuke, he feels nothing_) when she yells at him. He feels nothing when she punches him through a series of walls, his thin and wiry body snapping through all of them in the shape of a foolish boy who asked too many questions and never knew the right thing to say, a boy who wasn't Sasuke.

He feels **nothing **and it kills her.

Sometimes when she offers to trim his hair for him on missions, on the days when he isn't being overly rude, on the days when he is quiet… on those days, she is reminded so much of Sasuke that she loses herself.

She loses herself, drowning not in his eyes, but in memories of the boy from her childhood. Sai is just the shell of a person, full of nothing. (_Nothing nothing nothing._) She wants to fill him up. She wants him to join her in drowning. She wants him to choke and cough and sputter and gasp for air, gasp like she did whenever Sasuke truly smiled. (_You fake your smile. What's wrong with you? You're not him. I hate you. I love you. I love him. you're not him._)

He feels nothing when she kisses him, mumbling, "Sasuke-kun, you're back," or "Sasuke-kun, you're here."

He feels nothing when she cuts his hair like Ino did for her as Sasuke watched. He feels nothing when she smiles (_he doesn't smile like I do. He doesn't smile like Sasuke once did. It's not my Sasuke-kun; you're not Sasuke. Not him not him not him._) at him, the smile reserved only for him.

She gives him her smiles, her words, her skills as a medic—not to mention skills as his hairdresser—and her kisses, her friendship.

He throws her words away…they don't slip past his façade. He feels nothing.

His hands are warm when she grabs them (_Sasuke-kun and I are finally holding hands_), but his hands really aren't anything like Sasuke's. Sai has feminine hands; his fingers are too long and bony.

And he doesn't feel her holding his hand. He feels nothing.

(_You're not him you're not him you're not him. Sasuke was cold all the time. You're not him. His hands were shaped differently and you're not him. I hate you. Why aren't you him?__Why aren't you him… there's something wrong with you, why can't you be him?_)

"Sai," she says one day. (_Sasuke_.)

And he frowns. He frowns because he knows what she is thinking, and thinks of how every time he is near her she plays with his hair and tells him to grow it out and let it get spiky (_spiky like Sasuke's. Let me play with your hair, Sasuke-kun._), but then she cuts it anyways, just to be near him.

He frowns because he knows that she wants him to be Sasuke, that she won't accept him as anything else.

He frowns because they're failing eachother, since he wants her to be someone else too. He wants her to be his girlfriend, his dedicated lover, and his friend who knows nobody of the name Sasuke.

Sai frowns because she was wrong, and he feels something.

Jealousy.

* * *

**Author'****s Notes: **I just love the SSS love triangle.

TBC.


	2. Not being

**Cipher,**  
_part two_

* * *

  
The mind is a Shinobi's weak point.

Brains are left unguarded, and even the simplest of genjutsu can often find a way into one's thoughts.

Every now and then, Sai feels as if he is losing his mind. He doesn't guard against the genjutsu that Kakashi trains him with, or the ones that Sakura puts him under out of spite.

He doesn't care anymore, really.

He hopes that someday, when an illusion is dispelled from the depths of his mind, it will take all of his thoughts with it.

He thinks about Sakura a lot. In fact, he thinks about the whole of Team Seven.

He thinks when he should be painting. He thinks when he should be sleeping. He thinks when he shouldn't, in times when he is meant to take orders. He thinks and he ponders and he considers, and he is always left with the same conclusion: he isn't good enough.

No matter how hard he tries, or how much he looks like the young Uchiha, he could never replace Sasuke. He knows that every time Sakura looks at him, she doesn't really see him. She sees someone else.

Sai's favorite place to think is on the pier. The waterway leads to Kirigakure, where Team Seven had its first B-rank mission with Sasuke. He likes it there because he can see his reflection in the water, and notice time after time that he does look a _little_ bit different than the Uchiha.

By all means, he shouldn't know what Sasuke looks like. But he'd seen the picture in Sakura's room, seen the grin plastered on her face in the picture.

He asked her about the picture one day. It was a foolish thing to do, but he couldn't help himself. He had to know Sasuke's old habits, so he could behave in a different manner than Sasuke did.

She turned the picture down when he'd questioned her. Naruto, days later, took note of the face-down frame and whispered, "That's what Sasuke did before he left the village…"

No matter what Sai does, it all comes down to Sasuke.

And he thinks he will never amount to anything else.

* * *

**Author's** **Notes: **A few of you asked for the story from Sai's view. This isn't much, but I felt compelled to post it anyway. 


End file.
